WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Federal regulators will be able to take back up to two years of Wall Street executives’ pay if they are found responsible for the collapse of a major financial firm, under a plan approved Wednesday.

The provision is part of a broader Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation rule laying out the order in which creditors will be paid during a government liquidation of a large, failing financial firm.

The Dodd-Frank financial oversight law gives financial agencies the power to recoup executives’ pay, but bankers were complaining that regulators were taking it too far.

The F.D.I.C.’s final rule provided some relief by clarifying “negligence” as the standard. The agency was careful to point out that it was not using the more narrow standard of “gross negligence.”

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John Walsh, the acting comptroller of the currency, who had raised concerns about the standard being too broad, said he was pleased with the changes.

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“I was concerned that it seemed to focus more on job titles than the actual actions that people had taken,” he said.